The Thousand Ways To Bleed
by LithiumDoll
Summary: Hours later, Sam opens his eyes


**Betas**: Thanks to the fantabulous and talented Poisontaster and Mitchy  
**AN**: Yuletide fic for kissmeagain  
**Disclaimer**: Nothing and no one here you recognise is mine. Pity.

Hours later, Sam opens his eyes. He can see Dean's mouth is set in a tight line and he can't remember the last time he saw his brother smile.

It feels like they've been driving forever and taking tiny slices out of each other all the way. Cutting with words and then slick-edged silence; both biting deep before he sees them coming. Sam thinks it's like razors in candy apples; Dean doesn't seem to think about it at all.

"Now what is _this_ shit?"

Dean's fingers drum hard against the steering wheel and give his anger a slow two-four beat that doesn't match the frustration in his voice. Sam looks up from a scratch on the dash as they slow and then stop behind a red Dodge. It has a cracked license plate and a woman at the wheel watching them in the rear-view mirror through black ringed eyes.

He doesn't know what town this is - some place a hundred miles north of wherever the hell they were before - but they're having a bad day. There's a thick cloud of black streaked smoke hanging across the road. Cars and buildings appear and disappear as the wind shifts it back and forth without clearing it away.

Muted streaks from the slow flashing lights of the fire trucks and ambulances pierce the smoke and make it glow from the inside as the sun behind it lights up the edges.

He can't figure out how they didn't see this from miles down the road, when they were still on the highway and not surrounded by Small Town USA. Maybe they did and mistook it for just another mountain on the horizon. Had to say that for north of nowhere - it was scenic.

"Doesn't look good." Sam leans forward as if it will help him see through the cloud.

Dean twists to look over his shoulder, hand on the shift ready to reverse, but they're already blocked in by an indistinct row of cars behind them. He gives a short cough and sits back in neutral. "And we're going nowhere."

"Might as well go see what's happening then, huh?" Sam grins fast and opens the door faster, expecting Dean to call him back. He doesn't. After a moment he can hear the click as the other door opens and then they're both standing staring into the smoke and listening to the shouts and sirens and the hiss of water fighting fire.

Breath mists in the air, mingles with exhaust fumes and loses itself to the smoke. The snow feels gritty, his foot scrapes across slush covered gravel.

"Guess someone left their turkey on too long. Good colours. Festive." Dean squints and tries to make out the action but he doesn't try hard.

"I though you liked Christmas; you were always the one who made Dad decorate."

Dean's expression twists. "Yeah, hey, thanks for those cards you didn't send, old man really appreciated them."

Sam decides this slice is on his arm, under his shirt where Dean won't see it; he smiles like broken glass. "Jess and I figured it was better if we did our own thing."

Dean tries to make peace with a shrug and a blunted smile. "Anyway, I've got all the decoration I need."

"Miss December really doesn't count."

"You're the one you got me the calendar, dude. Did I thank you for that?"

"Yeah, in October. The triplets."

The indifference Dean's been wearing like his own personal security blanket lifts into fond remembrance and Sam wonders if they're done picking over the pieces now.

A fireman in yellow and orange, black streaked as the smoke he walks out of, clears his throat of the fire and speaks while they're staring at each other over a temporary truce. "Sorry, boys. Going to have to ask you to get back in your car - this will take a while."

Yellow and orange and black shades of burning. Sam wonders whether they want to camouflage themselves so the fire won't see them when they kill it. He thinks he and Dean should wear black before he realises his brother already does.

Dean nods and the indifference has come back while Sam wasn't watching "That's what they always say."

The visor of the helmet is marbled with lines of water and soot but the fireman's confusion is clear and Sam speaks up to cover the strangeness as much from habit as care. "We're just trying to get through town."

"Yeah, like they're not." The helmet nods towards the cars behind them. "Just sit tight and we'll get you through."

An hour later Sam's throat is beginning to ache. Dean hands him a plastic bottle half full of warm water that tastes like smoke then sits tapping the wheel and nods his head to silence.

The smoke is beginning to play tricks – he hopes they're tricks. Shapes and shadows and he knows all about coincidence but he wishes the shapes and shadows didn't make faces.

There's a girl, mouth wide open and screaming and his fingers reach for pen and paper he locked in the trunk.

Dean's beat goes on and Sam ducks his head to avoid the pleas from the ghost in the smoke. He reaches into the back for the box of tapes wondering if, one day, he'll find something in there he can stand. "Put a tape in."

Dean doesn't even glance over. "Heard it all before."

He flicks through them, the plastic cases rattle and he tries to ignore the dark spots he knows are old blood he wasn't around to see. "Like that's stopped you. I remember some of these from when we were kids."

When Dean doesn't reply he drops the box back and reaches for the radio dial. The plastic ridges feel too slick under his fingers.

"Don't bother."

Sam turns the dial and it's nothing but static. Left and right and there's just white noise crackling in counterpoint to the still red-edged smoke. "Huh."

"Probably all this." Dean has brought cutting him off to an art, Sam has to admit, when he manages to do it before Sam has even started talking. And he thinks for old blood's sake it has to be worth one more try.

"Will you just talk to me?"

Dean turns his head away but the sun is going down now and the window is a mirror on a blank expression whose eyes rise in shades of shadow to meet his own. "There's nothing to talk about."

"Is this because I shot you? Because I didn't wake you up quick enough to talk to Dad? You say we're okay and then you go pulling this."

Dean's mouth opens as if he'll give an answer and then it just curves into a smile and his reflection's gaze flicks away to stare at a point that feels like it's two inches inside Sam's head.

The door handle feels as greasy and warm as the dial did. "Okay, you know what? You decide you want to talk like a real boy, I'll be outside."

"We're moving."

"We're not-" He stops. The car in front is finally pulling forward and Dean eases them after it. Down a side street still thick with people but the only red tint is the sun setting.

Sam sinks lower in his seat and pitches his tone at fact not curiosity. "There's something wrong in this place."

"There's a motel."

"It'll be full."

It isn't.

Three showers later and he can still smell the smoke on his skin; he rolls onto his back so he doesn't have to smell it on his hair. The hiss of the shower as Dean takes his turn pulls him towards sleep but the choking heat of memory is behind his eyelids so he stares at the ceiling and counts the tiles one by one and wishes there were clean clothes to wear.

When the door of the bathroom opens in a rush of hot damp air he speaks. "Where are we going?"

"Possession, couple of towns up."

Dean is moving around the room but Sam doesn't look. He remembers now, a red circle around the photograph of some kid in a paper, lying on a coffee-stained diner table. He doesn't remember agreeing but he supposes he must have somewhere in the depths of guilt or sleep deprivation.

"Think they'll last another day?"

"Yeah." Now he looks over, Dean is pulling on his t-shirt.

"No, see that's your cue to give me the responsibility speech."

"Maybe it's reverse psychology."

"_Dean_."

"You think there's something weird about the fire, you want to check it out before we go. And if we went we'd just end right up back here anyway."

The last seems like an afterthought and Sam ignores it. "I- yeah. Pretty much."

"So they can wait another day. That ectoplasm ain't getting any colder."

"You don't want to stay?"

Dean shrugs and turns to fetch his necklace from the folds of towel.

The diner next to the motel smells of smoke; from the family in the booth at the back, from the two policemen solidly working their way through bacon and eggs almost swimming on the plates and from the scuffed lines of black boot prints across the floor the waitresses stopped trying to clean hours ago.

The smell of the grease is worse and Sam half turns before he remembers he wants the coffee as much as Dean. The waitress is busy trying to make a little girl smile and he slides onto a stool at the counter while they wait. A stack of newspapers has been left at the side and he pulls one closer, skimming over the print.

Dean's hand reaches across and pulls another paper from the pile but Sam's not really looking.

He's looking at the ghost from the smoke, smiling from the front page. The missing Queen of the Christmas Parade, curled blonde hair and silver drop earrings catching the flash.

To his left he can hear the pen begin to scratch as Dean puts red circles around more lives.

"You're going to have to talk to me one day."

"Not today." Dean's slouch straightens and the grin surfaces and Sam doesn't think for a moment it's for him.

"What'll you have, hon?" The waitress's hair is the same yellow as the fireman's uniform and her lipstick is too pink but her smile is kind and tired and hopes she makes good coffee.

"Coffee, please. Two." Dean's smile remains. Such a nice boy, Sam can almost hear her thinking it. Her nametag reads 'Dorrie'.

"Coffee we got."

Dean folds his paper and pushes it to the side; Sam still hasn't escaped the Winter Queen's smile.

"We got three kids missing." Dean taps the face on the front page between the eyes. Sam wants to pull the paper away and smooth out the nail marks. "Celia Markham, her brother Paul and the girl who was going to replace her – Michelle - disappeared the day after."

Two mugs of coffee slide in front of them; Sam looks up into Dorrie's pensive frown. She raises two ringed fingers to her lips and drops them to the photograph of Celia. Her pink painted nails scratch the paper as they withdraw. "God keep her, poor little girl. They should've cancelled the parade."

One of the cops - he can't see which - snorts. "Like that was going to happen."

"Well they should've. They should've cancelled it and they didn't and look what happened." The rings glitter under the fluorescent lights as her hand swings to point towards the town and the smoke spreading like a bruise over the sunset.  
Dean drops coins on the counter, doesn't bother to look at them let alone count them, and they leave to the sound of arguing.

The air is still hot and thick but the wind is finally beginning to pick up, Sam can see buildings now. Crackling and popping is underscored by the hiss of snow as it falls. They park up in a back street and sit for a moment watching the black smoke bleed into the night.

Sam doesn't raise his voice, he doubts it will help and he doesn't know why he's still trying. "You haven't said more than two sentences to me since the asylum."

He remembers smiling over his apology and he remembers Dean not sharing the joke and then they were driving and the road just went on forever like it was cutting them right down the middle.

"Ancient history, it's forgotten. Shut up about it already." Dean flips the top on the EMF and tucks the bud into his ear.

"Then what are you still blaming me for?" His voice sounds small and he hates it but Dean, just for a second, looks like he might finally crack. The next second is an open door and the cold seeping into the car and Sam can only follow.

"We got something." Dean is studying the Walkman closely, turning in a methodical circle.

Sam focuses on the hunt and watches his breath frost in the air. "From the fire, right?"

"Nope, that-a-way." Dean turns from the still milling chaos up the street and begins walking.

"That doesn't make any sense. The face was in the smoke."

"The Walkman doesn't lie."

If he can't have a reason he can still keep slicing away, it's the only thing they share now. "Good to know something around here doesn't."

Dean doesn't even flinch. "Dr Phil called; he's looking for his schtick. Are we going to do this or we going to talk about warm fuzzy feelings?"

His brother is staring at him but so is the Christmas Queen and Sam decides feelings are neither warm, nor fuzzy. "We're going to do this and then we're going to talk."

"I can't wait."

They trace the route of the parade by holly sprigs thrown on the road and becoming dark thorns on the ground as the sun goes down, and the red berries that stain that the snow when he treads on them. Soon the black-tinged white under foot will just be white again, like nothing ever happened. Sam likes winter but sometimes he hates it too and this one doesn't feel like it's ever going to end.

Dean flips through his paper and folds it over at a small route plan. "Okay, looks like the floats went up at the end of the route. It circled around the town then finished going through Main Street here. So it started… " He looks from the map to the street, from the street to the map, and then points. "…up there."

The EMF is almost humming now, not the Geiger counter beeps but a continuous high wail that feels like it's burrowing into Sam's head.

"Guess so." He looks up at the building. Dark façade and ornate stonework, the door and windows are boarded over but he can see the cracks and gaps where the wood has been forced away. Probably has more traffic from the kids than the toy store.

Dean is already walking and he jogs to catch up.

The planking across the window comes away in their hands; the nails are long since gone to rust and midnight crowbars. There's no glass to watch for as he crawls though the hole, but splinters of wood catch at his clothes and hair until he frees himself by letting go to fall to the floor.

Dean is on the sill and Sam rolls from the thin pool of light to stand in the darkness to give him room to land, then extends a hand to help him up and stays close.

Eyes adjust and dust covered furniture can be seen, half shrouded in sheets and curtains faded with age; desks and cabinets and shadow-framed pictures on the walls.

Dean's torch clicks on and the light is like a slap in the face, leaving the ghost imprints dancing before him for a second before the light is gone; the darkness rushes back darker than before.

"Batteries?"

"When is it ever the batteries? EMF's dead too. Looks like we got us a live one."

Sam checks his watch and he frowns, it's stopped but it didn't stop here. Back on the road, he thinks, hours ago.

A metallic ch-chink and a kinder light this time as the flickering flame from Dean's zippo is held up. It's not much but it's enough.

"The police would have checked this place out already."

"But they wouldn't know what they were looking for, would they?"

There's a door to their left and Dean turns the handle; the door opens with a drawn out whisper of sound as it brushes over the carpet and kicks more dust into the air to dance into the tenuous light.

They step out onto the floorboards of a long hall that creak, every step an announcement of their presence that echoes up the stairs and down the black corridor ahead.

"Up or on?" Dean should be quiet, but he isn't. He sounds almost bored and Sam's all for showing no fear but this is ridiculous.

"Have you been here before or something?"

"Or something. Come on, seen one spooky old house that wants to eat your soul, pretty much seen them all. No originality."

"Then lead on, MacBeth."

"Lay on. And it's MacDuff."

"What?"

"It's 'lay on, MacDuff'. I looked it up once."

"… you pick now to get chatty?"

"And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough'." The traces of amusement are gone now. Dean's just staring at him; the flame jumps and casts him into light and dark, changing his features until he's starkly himself and starkly not between one blink and the next.

"You'd tell me if you were possessed, right?"

"Yeah, you'd be the first to know. Up or on?"

"On. Check under the stairs, maybe there's a basement or something."

Dean pulls open the door under the staircase and Sam tries not to flinch as something brushes against his leg; grits his teeth and ignores the sound of something skittering away. There's a hiss and a flare as the lighter catches a cobweb; it burns bright and fast, he has enough time to see a spider disappear into the crook above the door and then the light banks.

There's a bucket in the corner, a rag hanging over a mop pole and dust that hasn't been disturbed in a decade or more. Sam's already thinking of the stairs. "There's nothing."

The sound Dean makes as he crouches is noncommittal, fingers brushing away the almost solid chunks of dust from the floor boards, then finally replies. "We could go get some sleep, come back tomorrow when it's light."

"What if those kids are here? We can't leave them, Dean."

The quiet laugh doesn't have even a passing acquaintance with humour. "I knew you'd say that. Help me lift."

Sam squeezes in and now he can see what Dean was clearing. A few of the boards have cuts in them and now the debris of time is gone he can see it's a rough trapdoor. There's no handle but Dean is already working his knife blade under the cracks to lever it up.

Something creaks above and Sam resists the urge to duck down but he pulls his collar tighter as he reaches to help.

The trapdoor gives way grudgingly but their father always says nothing good ever comes easy. The drop below is only blackness, no way to tell the distance, no way to tell what's waiting. He thinks he can hear water and the smell is stagnant.

Dean reaches up to snag the rag hanging from the pole above them, so old and dry it sounds like paper as it's crumpled into a ball. It sounds like paper once it's lit, too, and the flame moves like it's caught in the wind as it's held over the hole.

It burns all the way to the ground and he guesses it's maybe fifteen feet down.

Dean looks like he wants to offer an out again, there's something breaking in his brother's eyes and he reaches a hand to stop him as Dean slides to sit with his legs through the hole.

"Dean, what …"

"Next time."

"Next time - " Sam makes a grab but it's too late and Dean is gone, landing by the burning marker. He scrabbles fast to follow, dropping into a crouch with a question already framed by his lips but the sound dies in his throat as he takes in the scene before them.

He doesn't know what this place is; it feels like slick rock underfoot and just a little uneven. The rag still burns but ahead is a round cavern with a red light shining up from a circle on the floor and casting huge, writhing shapes on the walls and curved dome. There's a figure in the center of the lights, frozen hands supplicating the heavens he can't see.

Dean stays where he landed, Sam guesses it's shock as he walks closer to the tableau. Now he can see figures lying at the feet of the man in the center.

The Christmas Queen lies on the floor to his right, the pretender to the throne beside her. The Queen is dead; he can tell because nothing alive is that pale, that bloodless – nothing alive could stare so unseeing and uncaring. The pretender is alive and gagged and he can smell her terror in sweat and worse but she doesn't move, frozen like still life.

Reluctantly Sam turns his attention to the figure in the center. A younger man, he guesses, closer to his age than Dean's but it's hard to tell. He's naked and his skin is a canvas of bloody furrows and cut sigils that seem to pulse and make Sam's eyes ache.

There's a shot that echoes out and around until Sam can't even remember where it started and it sure as hell wasn't rock salt. The carved man jerks back; the blood trickling from a hole between his eyes is just a river joining the sea.

"Jesus!"

"Doesn't matter. Just kinda makes me feel better."

Dean's smile is crooked in the face of Sam's shock and he nods towards the still standing boy. "He's not dead. Not alive either but that's just being picky."

"He's a ghoul? Zombie?"

Dean steps back into the shadows beyond the pool of red light and his voice is almost a monotone, a bored recital that doesn't sound nearly as horrified as it should.

"Meet Paul, Celia and Michelle. Don't ask me how he knew about this place or what he's trying to do, if I knew that we wouldn't be here. Given what we're looking at, I'm guessing something to screw around with time."

"Whatever it is, doesn't look like it worked."

Dean ignores him, still talking like he's reading from a prepared speech and answering questions Sam's barely started to think of. "These tunnels go all the way through town; whatever he did blew out through a hardware store while the parade was going by, pretty much went downhill from there."

"We have to get the other girl out of there."

"That never ends well."

It's the softness that makes him step back, forces him process how much Dean is telling him that he can't know and Dean's voice keeps pressing in.

"You'll try to pull her away and the feedback will get you too, you'll die screaming and nothing I do will keep you alive.

"I'll try pulling her out because I can't watch you die again but you'll always get there first.

"Then you'll decide to wait it out and we'll be back caught on the road in front of a red Dodge called Trixi because the driver thinks that's the cutest name for a car ever. One time you spent the entire day locked in the trunk. Didn't help but I got to read Macbeth in peace."

Sam licks dry lips and doesn't have time to wish he'd brought the water from the car before the bottle is rolling heavily across the stone towards him. He stops it with his foot but he can't look down. "How long? How many times have we done this?"

"I stopped counting." Dean steps out of the shadows with his gun held loosely in his hand and Sam wishes to God he'd never wanted to see behind Dean's indifference. It's not madness and it's not sanity and he wonders how long it took for his brother to break.

"I see you and I watch you and I remember everything, Sammy." Dean's inches away and Sam can see his own reflection distorted in his eyes. "You have no idea and you never will."

Dean leans closer and the reflection holds Sam like a snake holds its prey. Images and scenarios flash desperately through his mind to rationalize, contextualize, to understand and then narrow and focus until there's nothing there but Dean's breath hot like fire on frozen skin.

"No." He breathes the word out from a chest feeling so tight he's not sure he can even manage that.

Dean's smile is crooked as he steps back and if he only looked at the smile he could believe it was a joke but the eyes still hold him. "Sometimes you say yes. And you make this little noise right after you say it. You bite when you kiss, there's always blood."

Sam stares at him and now he knows he's beginning to hyperventilate. "This is hell."

His brother nods in casual agreement and turns away; the hold is gone and Sam finally finds the breath for a question Dean hasn't answered. "Why do you remember?"

"That's always the last thing you ask. We've got time, we've always got time. Why don't you go work it out?"

"Just fucking tell me."

Dean's grip on his shoulder is sudden and hard, fingers digging in to the point of pain as he turns him to face the circle.

"Who do you think is keeping this going around and around, huh? Paul was dead and you were dead so I ..." Dean's words falter like he can't find any and Sam wonders how many times he's tried.

Sam looks again and he sees the pool of blood at Paul's feet is as frozen as everything else in the circle of the sigils, powering nothing, and he knows why none of the slices with words and silence he makes on Dean ever show. There's no room for them.  
"You took over the spell. Jesus. This has to stop. All these people. Dean." He raises his hands and knows he's going to try and fail because he must have tried and failed before.

"You'll die. You always die." Dean's voice cracks as he shakes his head. "No."

"I can't let you keep doing this." His words are a whisper and a lie and a gun is in Dean's hand.

His brother smiles an apology and Sam wishes he had his own gun and knows he never will.

"It's just until I figure a way out of this. There's got to be a way, Sammy. I promise I'll find it."

"Dean, don't do this." The air is sharp and cold and they're standing in red and his brother is pulling the trigger and all Sam can do is close his eyes.


End file.
